Sunday night. 9pm. The penultimate episode of Digitiser Series 1. This one is something of a guest-fest, with Ashens, Imran Yusuf, John Robertson, Dan Maher, Quang from Asobi-Tech and DJ Slope.

As others have correctly pointed out, the show has very much found its groove now. If you, or anyone you know, drifted away after the first ep or two... it's time to give it another chance. The most gratifying thing after last week's episode was seeing people talking about games off the back of it. That's when I knew we'd gotten the balance right. 

In the words of Sonic The Hedgehog, this weeks ep is "A good 'un!"

Interestingly, Ep 5 was the quickest one yet to edit - and I've realised that it's because I'm doing less experimenting with the format. And, also, I'm getting a bit of help with the sound and colour grading. Which is just as well, as this week my battered adrenal glands finally gave out, after a month or two of threats, and I succumbed to The Cold. 

So, one last ep next week - the big series finale. Which, in true end-of-the-series fashion, brings back everything you've loved so far...

If you'd like to appear here, or you've something you'd like me to give some attention to in our occasional Plug Zone, or you've got a picture of a bin you wish to share, please send your filthy emails to this place here: digitiser2000@gmail.com
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GUEST REVIEW BY SUPER BAD ADVICE

Museums are pretty great – where else can you see dinosaur skellies, poorly taxidermised cross-eyed apes and probably cursed mummies in the same place? What’s not great, though, is going to a museum with someone who insists on taking in every word of every single information panel.
 
You know the sort: while you want to move on to the T. Rex and that bit where you can pull levers and make a dented ping-pong ball go down a pipe to represent nuclear fission, they’ll be reading a novel-length epic about a lump of bauxite in a dusty corridor that hasn’t been visited in decades.
 
Worse still, they’ll even linger to read plaques in the human reproduction exhibit, right in front of the disturbingly hirsute nudey models who look like they’re from that ‘funny yoga’ book you found under your mum and dad’s bed in 1982. Perverts.
 
Now, imagine that you’re with 3 or 4 people like that, and you ALL have to read the information boards before you’re allowed to move on whether you like it or not. Does that sound like fun? Does it, Dennis? Of course it doesn’t. So you’ll be as delighted as I was to discover that this craptacular gaming mechanic has inexplicably been made an integral part of Fallout 76’s multiplayer experience.

​Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Of all the original PlayStation icons, Spyro the Dragon was one that I never expected to endure. Somehow, the character - albeit eventually coming to be buried beneath a coagulation of fellow dish-eyed cartoon characters - saw his series evolve into the long-running Skylanders franchise, despite having all the distinctness and personality of a clog that somebody had scrawled the word "DUDE" on in biro.

Despite that, when my kids were little, Spryo was something of a fixture in our household.

​My youngest daughter was never big into games, but the Spyro series (and, later, Kameo: Elements of Power) were her games. Consequently, the splashback nostalgia she still radiates has given me a sort of latent sentimentality towards the Spyro series.

She's 22 now, but even asked for a second-hand PS1 and a copy of Spyro for Christmas last year. Naturally, I was happy to oblige, given that she usually just wants crystals, and dreamcatchers, and all that shit. Though I have noticed that they now do a Spryro incense burner, which is a surprising confluence of things she's into.

Actually, for £29.99 they can fuck off. She can have socks.

It's getting better and better isn't it? For me, last night's ep of Digitiser is the best one yet. In terms of balance between all-out stupid stuff, chemistry between the hosts, and talking about games, it absolutely nails it. 

We know we've already won back a few people who buggered off after ep 1, but the general consensus seems to be that, well, people just want more. In all honesty, I don't know what happens after the series ends.

At the moment all I can think about is the next couple of episodes, and then taking a break, but just know that we would love to build on what we've achieved, and we're open to suggestions as to how we fund it. I'm a bit off the notion of doing another Kickstarter at the minute... 

For now, the best thing you can do is tell people about this show. We've found a core, passionate, audience - but there have to be more people out there who'd love this. We're well aware that we've made something very special here. 

Anyhow. Time to reveal some of these: secrets.

If you've yet to see the episode, be aware that this article contains spoilers...

Stuff a load of this up your "musty breach", Gordon: Commodore didn't just make the Commodore 64 and Amiga. The company's origins date back to 1954, when New York-based Polish taxi driver Jack Tramiel - a survivor of Auschwitz no less - founded the Commodore Polski Sklep Companski (Portable Typewriter Company).

AS cheap Japanese typewriters started flooding the North American market, Tramiel moved his business into manufacuring adding machines. More Japanese competition in the late-1960s convinced Tramiel to visit Japan with a view to understanding his competitors - and he returned with the notion to move into electronics, wearing a schoolgirl uniform and a pair of cat ears.

Specifically, Commodore's focus would henceforth be this: calculators.

​And one thing led to another.

​Here, then, is the rest of the Commodore family - the ones nobody ever talks about. You know: like that uncle who used to come for Christmas, but stopped being invited after he attempted to impregnate the turkey while mother was still removing the giblets. His name? Uncle Bruno Bongo! 

The ZX Spectrum was my machine.

I know I'm not alone in clutching it to my hairy bosom, but if I was forced to have my memory wiped of all but one games system, the Spectrum is the one I'd choose to keep. It was the point at which I properly understood the potential of games - the breadth of its catalogue displaying more imagination and creativity than that of any rival home computer.

I played a lot of diverse games back then - let's face it, we all did thanks to the ubiquity of illegal C90 cassettes being passed around among mates - but one of the system's most potent selling points were its arcade conversions.

A machine as objectively limited should not have been able to offer any half-decent conversions of games designed for hardware costing thousands of pounds... and yet, somehow, the Spectrum provided a ton of them. And here are 10 of my favourites.

Watch this Sunday's ep of Digitiser, where I make an impassioned defence of the Speccy.

It's unlikely that even Sega would suggest its Saturn was anything less than an embarrassing failure, the console equivalent of having your trousers fall down just as you reach the check-out in Lidl... Oh no! And you forgot to put on any underwear to boot!

We've all been there.

Over the years, the reasons given for gaming's biggest folly have included a botched launch, underpowered hardware, the lack of an original Sonic The Hedgehog game, bee reasons, and - most significantly - aggressive competition from the PlayStation.

Whereas the Mega Drive/Genesis had been driven to success by the passionate and confident leadership of Sega of America, the Saturn was kneecapped by internal divisions within Sega.

And yet... does the Saturn really deserve its feeble reputation? Surely it can't have been all smelly? Get a load of this, sweaty: it wasn't', and here are 12 very good reasons why you should give it another chance. 

I get to every Sunday and think "Well, that episode was a nightmare to edit - at least the next one won't be". And then it is.

Ep 3 was indeed a nightmare of an edit, and the final final version - still warts and all - wasn't uploaded until a few hours before the ep went live (allowing just enough time for YouTube to process it). Before that happened, some of you over on Twitter may have noticed that Paul Gannon and I found ourselves in the midst of a wee brouhaha.

Earlier in the week, Paul had come up with a plan to drum up a bit of extra interest in the episode by pretending we'd had some sort of big falling out. He was going to announce his resignation following the episode, with a special video, I was going to respond - then we'd carry on the charade throughout this week, before kissing and making up, and him rejoining the series just in time for next week's episode. I thought it was genius.

We're both big fans of Gregg Turkington and Tim Heidecker's On Cinema At The Cinema, and they offer a similar sort of meta narrative, which spills out of the show and into the real world. And it's great - it kind of extends the show beyond the boundaries of a just-once-a-week thing.

Unfortunately... it appears we may have been too subtle, and as fun as it was for us to do... well, we won't be doing it again.

I mean, I thought my over-the-top Trump-style tweets were a pretty clear indication that this was all a big joke. And that saying Paul Gannon "nearly dies" in the episode was obviously OTT clickbait hyperbole. Not to mention the fact that the series was filmed six months ago, and if Paul had nearly died, or harboured some issue with what we'd done, he'd have quit long before now. Besides, if we'd really had a falling out I wouldn't have been part of CheapShow Live etc. etc.

Certainly - as grown men - we wouldn't have aired our dirty laundry on social media. I mean... give us some credit.

GUEST POST by LARRY BUNDY JR

Let’s set the scene… You discover that your favourite video game character is receiving their own statue.  It doesn’t matter that it costs a ridiculous amount of money and is too large to display anywhere in your house. None of that will stop you from forking out for an effigy of your beloved icon.

But the dream of sharing your home with a miniature of your gaming hero sometimes turns into a nightmare… Some of these creations are so hideous, they resemble the love child of Sloth from the Goonies and that bloke who drove into the chemical waste in RoboCop.

So, with a tear in your eye, off they go back into the box for all eternity as you’re too embarrassed to display it!

In honour of these computer chagrins, here are some of the worst examples of Special Edition Statues:

I have no hesitation in declaring Half-Life 2 my favourite game of all time. For me, it's the perfect game - blending enveloping storytelling with gameplay that remains fresh and varied throughout. Notably, it's the only game I've ever been arsed to play all the way through more than once; no less than four times in fact (plus the mini follow-ups, Episode One and Two).

It's hard to think of a game in the last 14 years which has manage to accomplish the same heady amalgam of fun, immersion, aesthetics, and variety. There's barely a limp moment anywhere in Half-Life 2 - but it's also startling how few games have been influenced by it. No wonder Valve has struggled to give birth to a bona-fide follow-up. 

For now though - and possibly forever - Half-Life 2 remains the best video game I've ever launched into my crevice. Here are some of the reasons why.

See? SEE? Aren't you glad now that you stuck with the show beyond the teething troubles of ep 1? And we're just hitting our stride with Ep 2. Which, admittedly, was a nightmare to edit - but we got there (in part thanks to some assistance at the 11th hour from the brilliant Chris Bullock). It was such a scramble to get this done that I hadn't even seen the full, finished, episode in one go before I had to upload it.

To be honest, after the technical issues with ep 1 (which I'll re-render, mix and re-upload at some point), I didn't care what anybody thought of the content of this week's ep; I just wanted it to look and sound okay. That bothered me with ep 1, because it's something that you can't attribute to personal taste. 

This week I've had quite a few people telling me not to take YouTube comments to heart, but I do need to stress that I really don't. They just wash over me, and this isn't just a "He doth protest too much" thing.

I don't get even slightly affected by the negativity (unless it's aimed at somebody I care about); either the person making shitty comments doesn't like what I've done (which is fair enough), or they're acting out (which sort of signifies something a bit sadder and deeper). Either way... whatever. I don't lose sleep over it. 

And, of course, the overwhelming majority of comments have been positive anyway.

I'm proud of what we've made here, I know it's good, it's true to what I wanted to make, and I'm also acutely aware that it won't be for everyone. Somebody said to me last week that we're living in a world of niches, and Digitiser is a niche. It always has been, for 25 years now. 

If you see me talking about shitty comments, it's just what Digitiser has always done. We often printed letters on Teletext saying how much people hated us, so this is comfortable territory for me.

Also, lest we forget, I wrote Pudsey The Dog The Movie. If even that hate-storm didn't get to me... this is nothing! So please... I appreciate the concern, but you really, really, really don't have to tell me to not read the comments. I know I'm old/fat/scruffy, I know my sense of humour is weird, I know some people will think Digitiser is shit. They can't tell me anything I'm not already aware of!

I wouldn't be doing this if I thought I couldn't handle it. And my wife wouldn't let me either. 

​And with that... on with my breakdown of this week's ep...

Guest Article by Super Bad Advice
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​Right, let’s get the contentious issue out of the way first: I’ve always been a console gamer at heart. My first ever games machine was an Atari 2600 – the one with a bit of wood stuck on, no less, which I’m sure my 7-year-old self reallyappreciated (you know, young kids and their love of teak veneer and all that). 
 
And – aside from a brief diversion for the ZX Spectrum and an Amiga (sorry, Biffo) – I’ve stuck with consoles ever since. In fact, I last properly dipped my beak into all things PC about 20 years ago, when I managed to get Tomb Raider 2 running on a horrible beige Pentium 75 tower I had at university.
 
So obviously, I’m the ideal person to do an article about PC gaming!
 
Why the console preference? Well I’m dead lazy, so I like the lack of platform faff with no driver updates, setting tweaks and security updates for one thing. I’m also a big right-on hippy and like the fact that on console, everyone gets the same experience (and yes, that’s slightlyless true these days what with the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro – but only a teeny bit).